The proliferation of peer-to-peer file sharing services on the Internet has exacerbated the conflict between digital content providers and digital content users. Having possession of digital content, a consumer will often act as if he or she has full rights to this digital content. However, the content provider often retains copyright protection over the digital content that is violated by certain actions of the consumer—for example, when the consumer allows unauthorized third parties to freely copy this digital content via a file sharing program.
To address this inherent conflict between consumers and providers of digital content, a variety of Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems have been implemented. For example, a commonplace scenario involves a user on a host system such as a personal computer surfing the Internet for digital content. Upon receipt of digital content, the host system must have some type of storage engine such as a hard disk drive to store the content on a storage medium (for example, a magnetic storage hard disk). A typical location for a DRM system in such an environment is in the operating system of the host. But this location is inherently vulnerable to “hacking” by a user bent upon violating the copyright holder/content provider's rights. Thus, there has been a need in the art for DRM systems that provide greater security for content providers. At the same time, however, a DRM system should not impact the legitimate expectations of consumers in regard to fair use of the digital content.
To address the need in the art for a DRM system that meets both consumers and content providers expectations, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/542,510, entitled “Digital Rights Management Within an Embedded Storage Device,” filed Apr. 3, 2000, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,636,966, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/583,452, entitled “Method of Decrypting Data Stored on a Storage Device Using an Embedded Encryption/Decryption Means,” filed May 31, 2000, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/940,026, entitled “Host Certification Method and System,” filed Aug. 27, 2001, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/940,083, entitled “A Secure Access Method and System,” filed Aug. 27, 2001, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,110,982, describe a DRM system in which the DRM “intelligence” has been integrated into the storage engine. As opposed to conventional DRM systems that reside on the host, the integrated storage engine approach is far less vulnerable to hacking by a user of a host system—the user has no access to the DRM functionality within the storage engine other than through the reading or writing of secure content from the storage medium associated with the storage engine. The user knows that digital content may flow to and from the data storage medium but cannot access the “how” within the storage engine that enabled such movement. Moreover, the integration of the DRM system into the storage engine is advantageous in portable applications. Different host systems such as kiosks at a content provider retail outlet or a personal computer may be more readily modified to couple to the portable DRM-system-integrated storage engine.
Despite the advances described above with respect to DRM-system-integrated storage engines, there remains a need in the art for improvements in the DRM field with respect to block-level storage devices.